Aetherloft, Chapter 3

A breeze carries the scent of rare flowers as Indigo adjusts zir uniform—a perfectly pressed black ballroom gown, showing off curves and colors that have no right to be there—while watching opulent guests from behind slatted screens. Chandeliers of spun ice refract rainbow light across a reception hall where Chastity and Drake are to be wed amid extravagant decadence. Ze places centerpieces amid crystal dishes.

One of the other slaves leans in, pointing to a ring resting on a pillow at the front of the space. “It’s one of those Qirathi relics,” ze whispers. “They say it bites.”

Indigo recalls vows ze has seen and thinks of zir own people—stripped of names and faces, forced to grow into a humanoid form that is pleasing to their enslaver’s eys, bought and sold like common mushrooms, no longer allowed a ceremony for anything.

Ze fills the priest’s goblet, observant, unnoticed.

The subjugating ones never look at the mycellics who carry their plates. Richly dressed figures float by, absorbed in their own worlds. Indigo imagines their voices as muffled echoes: Words wrapped in silk, words wrapped in poison. Ze knows them well.

Gliding among guests and fellow mycellic slaves, ze navigates the luxury with practiced ease. An animated food stand in a sea of life and color, ze places elaborate dishes on tables—near-extinct creatures roasted and glazed, salads of starry flowers, and fruits grown only in distant realms. Nothing here lasts longer than it takes to eat or enjoy. Centerpieces and guests included.

One table of women—humans in vibrant silks—gossip in animated tones. “His brother Roland didn’t come?” one says, fluttering a bejeweled fan.

“Of course not,” another replies. “And let this be about someone else for once?” Laughter spills over them like champagne. Indigo wonders if any of them even know the bride or groom, or if they are simply drawn to power and spectacle like moths to flame.

Ze passes the groom Drake’s attendants. They roar with laughter and down fine wine with alacrity, ordering zir to bring more. Drake’s in full showmanship mode, handsomely dressed in sharp azure, grinning as if the world is his. And it may as well be.

Indigo and the other staff are shadows moving through a dream. To say they have assumed disguises for the occasion, would be incorrect, as a disguise requires a baseline identity—something they have all been denied for their entire existence—but each of them no doubt longs for something more. Like Indigo, they have all been bred and raised to be empty slates; nothing more than servants in perfect uniforms, with perfect posture and perfect smiles.

At each sweep of the room, Indigo memorizes faces and names, letting them become part of zir. One day, this will be useful. One day, this will be gone. At least that’s what ze hopes.

Finally, the ceremony begins, the crowd settling into reverent silence. Indigo lingers near the back of the room, knowing exactly where to stand and how to listen without being noticed.

The bride stands tall and alone. The crowd’s eyes are on her, but none meet her gaze. They are too busy judging her dress, her stride, her poise. Her name passes between guests in speculative murmurs. “Chastity,” someone says with awe, “She actually went through with it.”

Indigo wonders at their surprise. Why wouldn’t she go through with it? Was there another choice for her? Having agency seems almost impossible. Ze watches, unseen and unacknowledged.

Chastity looks resolute, like a soldier stepping onto the battlefield. Drake, oblivious, beams at her as if she’s already a prize he has won.

The ceremony begins with gilded pomp, but the briskness suits them both. Chastity and Drake address one another with vows that sound like lines in a play neither wants to star in. Pretty words more for the crowd than each other, Indigo thinks.

The two of them barely acknowledge their beautiful, calculated performance even as their voices echo around the room. “To unite two kingdoms,” Chastity says, “and two lives.”

The guests lean in closer. Drake extends his hand with the eagerness of a child, missing her sarcasm, hearing only what he wants to hear. “Our stars are joined today,” he declares, his grin wide. “The universe will know our name.”

The vows sound like every other promise to Indigo, which is to say they sound like air. Ze considers zir own people, the mycelics, for whom a single promise is a lifetime, a single lie is eternity. They have no ceremonies, no words to bind them. The humans saw to that. The humans saw to everything.

When Chastity places the ring on Drake’s finger, Indigo thinks ze sees a sly smile, faint and quick to pass. He holds his hand aloft and the ring shimmers, innocent, like the crowd gathered beneath giant chandeliers.

‎‎‧*˚₊‧☁︎‎‎˚✦.˚⋆. ☁️˚. ★⋆. ☀︎‧࿐࿔ .˚*☁️.⋆˚.✦.˚☁︎‎‎‧₊˚*‎‎‧

The reception brings more noise and more nobles.

Indigo places a cut-crystal goblet in front of Drake as he stands and excuses himself with a quick glance at one of the bridesmaids, deftly pulling his wedding band off and placing it under his white, silk napkin. Indigo raises zir brow at a fellow servant, who smirks knowingly as Drake vanishes into a side corridor followed shortly after by that same bridesmaid.

A murmured spore-gossip spreads between servants, reaches Indigo’s quorum receptors. “Why waste time getting hitched,” one says, “when you could be getting lucky?” Drake disappears from view, his azure coat flapping as he rushes down the hall.

A moment later, air pressure shifts subtly, and something unseen cracks far off in the distance. It’s nothing that the human nobles would notice, but Indigo sees several other slaves shift uncomfortably along with zir. The new weight of the air hums around zir like a thousand pollinators wishing to help zir procreate. The ice was becoming unstable…

When Drake returns, there’s something frantic in his step. Indigo watches him with careful eyes, wondering if he even notices the weight in the air, the distant shudder as something stirs beneath their feet.

But Drake simply walks back to his seat, so Indigo moves to refill the priest’s goblet for the fifth time. The moment he returns to Chastity, her expression hardens as he notices that she’s holding his ring. She slips the band back onto his finger with a sharp, decisive motion.

Snap. A sickening, clean break.

Drake screams, his voice full of disbelief and betrayal.

It really does bite, ze thinks, as blood sprays across a white tablecloth and onto a noblewoman’s pale blue gown. She screams while Indigo continues to pour wine with practiced precision.

The nobles erupt into chaos; someone screams, someone else faints, a crystal goblet crashes to the floor.

Indigo doesn’t flinch, moving with calm through the pandemonium. It all seems to happen in slow motion, the chaos like music to zir ears.

Ze has watched promises break before. This is nothing new, not special. The shock on their faces, however—that is a delight. It is rare that humans see the edges of their own mortality.

Suddenly, the earth quakes violently. Crystal plates crash to the floor, ice chandeliers swing across the area above the wedding party, and the ceiling begins to split open. Indigo dives beneath a table, shielding a small child whose eyes are wide with terror. “Mama!” he screams, clutching at Indigo, too young to notice the oddity of zir calm.

A massive koi erupts from the glacier, its scales reflecting prismatic light. Ze feels a strange pulse behind zir eyes as the behemoth sings, the sound vibrating throughout zir hyphal-framework.

From zir position on the ground, Indigo sees something quite unfamiliar: a fish in the sky.

The earth shudders violently again. Chandeliers explode, raining shards like shrapnel. The once-beautiful setting fractures, reality collapsing into ruin.

Above them, the reception hall cracks open, exposing the chaos outside. Guests tumble into an abyss that grows larger with each shudder. Chastity’s bridesmaid has made it over to Drake, pulling at him, trying to get him to move, but he’s paralyzed—by pain, by shock, by the weight of his own folly.

From the ground, Indigo watches it all unfold with the detachment of someone who has seen these dramas play out before.

“Arumatheus!” Someone shouts, pointing up at the giant koi in the sky.

The child screams, a high, frightened wail that brings Indigo back to the moment. Back to the chance ze knows is waiting in this chaos. Ze holds the boy tightly, shielding him from the falling debris. Ze hopes that someone remembers him in the panic. Ze hopes someone forgets zir, perhaps even more fervently.

The koi roars, its massive body blotting out the sun. Arumatheus. Indigo lets the name echo in zir mind as the world cracks and the ground opens.

Through it all, ze watches Chastity. The ice in her veins is unmatched even by the frozen ceiling that splits above their heads. Indigo sees her shouting, indignant, at the bridesmaid, a slap that is meant to wake an unfaithful groom but lands on the woman in his arms instead. She is unfazed and unshaken, unlike the ground that quakes beneath them.

She grabs Drake’s severed ring finger, shaking it in the air at him.

Meanwhile, the ever-growing chasm devours everything in its path. Guests scatter in a blur of silks and whirling limbs. Entire tables of guests tumble into the abyss, gowns and suits and those inside them. Plates crash. Food flies.

Some of Drake’s men bark orders at servants, but somehow overlook Indigo. The shimmering chandeliers collapse in a rain of splintering ice. Flames erupt in flashes, a pyrotechnic display for later in the ceremony, meant to impress but now only adding to the destruction that unfolds around them.

The massive behemoth called Arumatheus calls again, closer this time. The sound is a symphony of destruction, conducting the hall into complete collapse. In the midst of the pandemonium, ze sees the child safely into a noblewoman’s arms, knowing that it will be gratitude enough for zir to go unseen and unremembered by any and all.

Chastity has pulled Drake upright. She’s slapped him sane. Blood stains his wedding finery as he clutches his maimed hand, staring in disbelief at his new wife. The very air around them seems to crack. The entire reception floor shudders as the nobles push towards the exit.

The chaos grows. Nobles scream as the world opens around them, the once-grand hall tearing apart like paper. The child clutches his mother, and Indigo watches them run towards a bridge that spans the growing chasm between the hall and the Empire’s flagship—the Mistmaker. The ship hovers over the collapsing venue attempting to rescue the nobles scrambling below as the ice continues to devour guests who are too slow to escape.

Arumatheus is now on top of them, its orange and black scales glistening with still-frozen ice crystals.

The bridesmaid has now abandoned her plan to tear Drake away from Chastity. The girl stands in shock, blood on her hands and a bruise already forming on her cheek. Chastity shoves Drake towards the massive hole that separates them from the Empire’s rescue ship. The Mistmaker hangs in the sky, but so does Arumatheus.

This is not a scene that any human was meant to witness, and yet they are here, and they are terrified. It is unplanned—a break from the script, from the usual life, from tradition. None of them knows how to handle that.

Chastity looks up, staring the giant fish in the maw and laughs. She shakes her head as Arumatheus shrieks again, unfolding more of its massive self from the glacier at the center of the cracking ice mountain.

Indigo smiles as Drake tries to pull Chastity toward the aethership, but she stands her ground, lobbing his severed finger into the gaping fish maw above her.

The earth shakes again, and the skybridge quakes violently, dropping guests off its sides like marbles into oblivion. Indigo watches them fall, a wailing, colorful windfall of breathless humanity, arching through the air and then abruptly lost from sight entirely. A blur of gold, a flash of emerald, a single, terrified scream. Then nothing.

Through the chaos, Indigo notes that the slaves, zirself included have been trampled beneath the surge, forgotten as always. A pulse thrums behind zir eyes in time with the great beast above, and ze sees the world splinter—sees these humans finally understand how fragile they are.

The massive koi roars again, and a chunk of ice from far above on the mountain is dislodged. It tumbles like a hundred small explosions before shattering the skybridge and the hope of escape into a thousand irretrievable fragments. The Mistmaker, unable to help any further, flies up into the sky and away as Arumatheus becomes entirely free, shaking its tailed fin loose from its ancient, icy prison. Now, even the panicking royals can’t keep pace with the resort’s erosion.

Indigo’s breathing—unnecessary, but ingrained—matches the rhythm of the behemoth’s song. It sings to zir in echoes of raw destruction. The reception floor tears even further apart, and the storm-like voice of Arumatheus drowns out all other sound.

The world crumbles and Arumatheus descends, its aether-wake burning across the sky. Indigo helps up a fallen servant who thanks zir without seeing zir face. Then ze watches in horror as zir fellow servers are crushed, eaten, and obliterated by the behemoth koi.

One of the ice pillars holding up what remains of the roof falls. Try as ze might, Indigo doesn’t make it clear in time and zir arm is caught beneath it. Ze screams—not from pain or loss, it would heal after a time—but because this was zir’s opportunity to escape. Ze didn’t know how, only that ze could feel it deep down…

Ze stares at the fleeing nobles and screams like a wounded girl, going completely limp and hoping for rescue, even if it’s back to life as a slave.

Indigo’s heart raced as a cold wave of shock washed over zir body, numbing zir limbs and clouding zir mind. Ze felt the world slowly fading away, sand slipping through fingers. As zir legs gave out beneath zir, ze caught a final glimpse of Drake, his face a mix of concern and urgency, looming above zir. The room around them blurred into darkness as Indigo succumbed to unconsciousness.

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